


The Maker of the Daleks

by nessundorma345 (wastrelwoods)



Series: The Madman and the Trickster [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse of the Marvel and Doctor Who Wikis, M/M, Mind Gem is Nearly as Bad as Mind Games, Space Opera, Tony as a Time Lord, Tragic Backstory Ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/nessundorma345
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Infinity Stones are a force to be reckoned with, and one of the universe's most dangerous at that. But the Mechanic and his reluctant ally, Loki, will stop at nothing to solve the mystery of the weapon known as Silvertongue, even if the search unearths unpleasant truths and old enemies alike. </p><p>(The Madman and the Trickster, episode 5)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _It's empty in the valley of your heart_  
>  The sun, it rises slowly as you walk  
> Away from all the fears and all the faults  
> You've left behind
> 
>  
> 
> \- Mumford & Sons, The Cave

*  
 _Gallifrey, before_

The sky was burning. 

Granted, it was usually pretty red, one of those quirks that set good old Gallifrey's apart from your average atmosphere. Usually, the sky glowed like a supernova, fire in the clouds and every star a ruby. Now it was bloodstained, clogged with smoke so that the only stars visible were the ten thousand Dalek ships studding the horizon. 

Chin propped on the most dangerous weapon in the known universe, the Mechanic grumbled. Dark eyes focused intently on the middle distance, he refilled his glass, then tipped his head back and tossed the liquor in robotically. He watched from the highest window of Arcadia's third tower. It was the tallest, which was really why he'd built it to begin with, and the view was a fucking dream. The perfect spot to sit and watch the world burn. 

"Could make this stop," he mumbled half-heartedly, to the box beneath his chin and no one in particular. "Make it all stop." 

Something he could almost have mistaken for a conscience if he hadn't known better, buried deep in his gut, laughed cruelly and reminded him that he had too much blood on his hands to destroy a whole planet now. Like anyone was keeping track. (He had a very long list in the back room.) 

"A planet," the Mechanic retorted, managing not to slur the word, "A planet to save the whole _universe_. Isn't that better?" 

The conscience made no reply, evidently exhausted for the century, but he could extrapolate the answer anyway. _What gives you the right to make that call?_  

He frowned, spinning the empty glass in circles with one hand absently. "Hey," he accused, "I'm being the responsible one here. That's a big deal for me." 

_Genocide cannot possibly be considered a responsibility, Stark._ Maybe it was triggered by proximity to the Moment, because the Mechanic could swear that he had never had this kind of a morality problem before. 

"It damn well is, when you're talking about the Daleks." Something dark roiled in his chest. He decided that maybe it was hatred.

_If your only solution is to kill, then what makes you any different from them?_. Oh, Christ, it even sounded like Yinsen. The Mechanic laughed like madman, hearts twisting in his chest, then pushed away from the chair to vomit, dry-heaving acid and alcohol onto the floor. "I have to," he croaked, eventually, entire body shaking until he thought he'd come apart at the seams. "This is my fault." 

It wasn't until he was standing again, a little weak in the knees and more than a little panicked, hands on the switch, that conscience spoke up again. _There has to be another way._

"There is no other way." Shaking his head slowly even as a hundred plans took shape and fell to pieces, the Mechanic picked up the weapon that would destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike, in one fell swoop. "There isn't even a goddamn choice." 

"There's always a choice." 

Spinning so fast he nearly dropped the box, the Mechanic stumbled back into the table. "Who the _hell--?_ "

"--Am I?" finished the stranger, in the lilting kind of way you would expect a fairy to say it. "That's a good question. A little predictable, maybe, but..." Her head tilted to one side, a cascade of fiery hair falling over her shoulder, and woah, this girl was not big on clothes, was she? The Mechanic's gaze wandered to the sports bra and yoga pants, which seemed to be smoking faintly. Which was weird, you know, but not quite as much of a turnoff as it probably should have been. He'd been drinking, alright? You didn't commit genocide while sober. 

"H-"

"Please don't ask me how I got here," pouted the stranger, crossing her arms and leaning a hip against the table. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius." 

The word most people might have used to describe the Mechanic's slow blink and uncomprehending stare was 'flustered'. But Starks were not supposed to get flustered. "Security breach," he called feebly, to no one in particular. 

A radiant smile lit the stranger's face, faint amusement playing in the angle of her brows. "The same way as you did," she answered abruptly, without much preamble, and it took a second for the Mechanic to retrace the conversation and put the comment in context. "We walked in together." 

A comment like that required an explanation, really, it was deliberately confusing and that was not fair because the Mechanic could see flames coursing under her _skin_ and that was more than a little distracting in and of itself. Still, he was a screaming genius, and he managed to put it together. Taking a step back that turned into a few steps to the side when his spine thudded against the table, he narrowed an accusing glare at her. "You're it. You're the moment," he said, and realized with a start that _he was still holding the bomb_ while _he was talking to it_. Placing the heavy box behind him with a lightheaded sort of disbelief, he pointed at the stranger, for clarification's sake. "Aren't you, um...hot?" he ventured. 

Smile twisting up in amusement, the moment took a step closer. "Thanks, but you're not my type." The expression flattened into a frown as she considered momentarily. "I don't really have a type." 

Clearing his throat, the Mechanic amended, "Did you know that you're on fire?" 

Her eyes widened in slight surprise. "So I am," she said, examining an arm as it blazed like coals from the heart of a furnace were trapped just beneath the skin. "I'm a live wire. Any minute, I could go _boom_. That's funny. I thought I'd use the form of someone you cared about, but the metaphor seems oddly appropriate." 

"I don't care about anyone."

"Don't you?" The moment stood back, arms folding over her chest. "Well. I suppose that makes my job harder, then." 

"Your job?" asked the Mechanic, fairly certain that he already knew the answer. 

There was something sharp and scorching in her smile now. "Not going boom," she provided. 

Cold in his chest, the reactor held his hearts in place even though they felt like they were twisting and blackening. His eyes were flint as one hand reached behind him to rest on the casing of the bomb. "I'm not about to let you stop me from doing what I have to do." 

"Kill me? Kill them all?"

Setting his jaw, the Mechanic stepped forward, drawing their attention to the scene from the window. If you listened carefully, you could even hear the screams echo from the streets below. "Every Time Lord and every Dalek," he said robotically, though she already knew. 

"And you?" 

Snorting in disbelief, he turned to her and shrugged. "Me? I'm going down with the ship, sweetheart." 

"No." Sighing the word like a hum, the moment's eyes grew sad. 

"No?"

"There has to be a story," she explained, lifting herself onto the table to rest a hand on the bomb where her mainframe rested. "And someone is always left behind to tell it. The unlucky living."  

The prospect loomed before him, endless and unbearably lonely. Like Noah, floating forever on a big wooden boat, staring out at the seas and knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was nothing else left in the whole world. Except he would have all the guilt, and the Mechanic had already outlived too many. 

"Son of a bitch, that's not fair," he whispered, his eyes falling shut, blocking out the smoke-torn sky. 

"You do this and you live. Or you can let this war take its own course, see if it leads you somewhere better." 

A ragged laugh crackled in his throat. "Don't ask me to have hope. I haven't had hope in a hundred years." 

He could see her pitying smile reflected in the window glass. "I'm asking you to do the right thing."

"Oh, is that all?" he said, voice dripping sarcasm, palms pressed to the glass, and there was no choice in the end, was there? Spinning around, he crossed to the table and wrapped his arms around the bomb. "Did they put an on-switch on this thing?" 

"Ask nicely," the moment told him, her eyes full of grief and pity and all sorts of heavy sentiment. 

"I'm going to do it," vowed the Mechanic, resolution singing in his blood, the consequences all be damned. "I can't do the right thing, but I can fix my mistakes, and I can try to live with the repercussions, because if I'm right, and I usually am, I won't have to do it alone."  

"You don't," confirmed the weapon's conscience, with an esoteric half-smile. "But what makes you certain that you have to be the one to do it?" 

Running a thumb over the side of the box and pausing when he discovered a button there, the Mechanic let his eyes fall down and away. "I've got the guts and the moral ambiguity, for starters," he said, the words heavy in his ears, "And I have a legacy to maintain, after all. The Merchant of Death has a unique kind of ring to it, don't you think?" 

"I can't stop you," she said, placing an incorporeal hand on his shoulder. "But I wish I could."

"I know," he replied, and pushed the button. 

Almost immediately, the door fell open. A tall, lanky figure half-stumbled, half-fell into the room, landing on hands and knees a few feet away. A sound like a gunshot and the smell of burnt almonds registered. 

The moment frowned. "Well, that wasn't supposed to happen." 

"That door was locked," pointed out the Mechanic, though he was talking to a weapon with a consciousness, so the realm of possibility was fairly wide. 

A burst of low, spine-chilling laughter came from the figure on the ground as he rocked forward ever so slightly. The sound rose in  volume until the screams of burning Arcadia were drowned out entirely, the newcomers' entire body shaking with laughter, from head to feet; mad, deafening, broken laughter that trailed off into giggles and deepened to sobs and then started over again. 

One hand still resting on the bomb like someone could snatch it from under his nose at any second, the Mechanic shifted a half-step closer. "Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?" Behind him, the interface tilted her head to one side, considering. 

Laughter subsiding abruptly as he choked down a noise like a hiccup. The stranger's head shot up, a pair of green eyes boring into his with all the intensity of a nuclear meltdown. "Sorry," he said, "I'm looking for the Mechanic."

*  
 _Godthab Omega Archipelago, much later_  

"Three twos." 

Stolidly unmoved, Loki let his thumb glide across the rough surface of the cup. It felt near ready to splinter beneath his touch, clearly overused, though it had passed his tests for tampering. He had nearly been tempted to bring forth his own dice--snaketooth ivory inlaid with onyx--if not for the added factor of distrust it would have provided. He had incentive enough to win without risking a loss which he would rather go without. Perhaps later, when the bets were piled high enough to make a sane man sweat blood. 

Norns, but it had been too long. "Four twos," he raised, and saw a tendon pulse in the creature's thick neck. Sontaran, the Mechanic had called him, as though that explained everything perfectly. 

The woman to his left laughed amiably, daggerlike teeth flashing in sharp contrast to her jade lips. "Hardly a daring call," she said, doubtfully, and Loki reviewed his own hand _four six two six ace_ against her swift glance downward, silently calculating for a moment.

_Four twos two aces one four, seven sixes a five and not a single three._ Loki allowed himself a faint smile. "You mistake me, dear lady." His grip on the cup shifted as he leaned forward, eyes glinting. "I mean every word of it."

"Then I raise you this beauty," she challenged, pulling the knife and slamming it hilt-deep in the center of the table so quickly that only a silvery blur was visible. "Let us hope," she shared a smile with the brute on his left, "That the stranger knows as much as he thinks that he knows. I would hate to see such a pretty face as yours get blood on it."

Now, those sort of stakes were more than familiar. Truth be told, there was some small part of Loki that had missed this. The hand not resting atop his cup gestured arbitraritly in a flamboyant twitch of fingers. A distraction from the quick once-over he gave the weapon, as well as a subtle hint that he could handle it himself if given a quarter of an opportunity. "Is that doubt I hear?" Truly, he hoped not. There was a chance that there were only six sixes and three aces, and it niggled at him insufferably. 

Gold-rimmed eyes wide in mock offense, the woman pursed her lips. "Nothing of the sort. You just can't be too careful, especially with the sort of wagers you've placed." Her gaze darted right, over his shoulder, as did the other creature's. 

Loki felt the heat of the Mechanic's glare through the fabric of his hood, and could not resist a twitch of a smile. "I am nothing if not mindful of my property, rest assured," he boasted, mostly to hear the faint snarl he gave in response. Those handcuffs were hardly comfortable, it seemed, but there was annoyance and there was danger of blowing cover. After all, a Time Lord and his ship would recieve a slightly different welcome here than a simple slave and master did. 

"Well, I say five fours," grunted the stout brute, hand tensing irritably on his cup. Loki ran his tongue across his teeth, weighing the likelihood of a blind guess over an unforseen twist to his carefully calculated figures.

It was possible, but then if possible meant likely then the universe would be a very different place, and a much more dangerous one for a game of chance. 

"Stark," he snapped irritably, "Another drink, if you would." 

"He's not going anywhere," the woman interrupted, leaning toward the dagger unconsciously. "Stakes stay put." 

Exaggerating the frown that bent his lips for effect, Loki leaned slightly back. "Then I suppose I'll have to raise you a round," he sighed.

The woman eyed him with more suspicion than before as she called two aces. Good. 

_Eyes dart to left controlled blink foot jumps lick lips._ "Seven sixes," Loki placed, careful to stumble just enough over the alliteration. It was important not to overdo it. Something told him that the Mechanic was staring in abject gaping horror, but the trickster knew better than to doubt that the brute's dice were loaded. 

For a long moment, he worried that neither party had bought it, but the woman subverted his expectations, leaning forward until they were nose to nose over their cups, emerald lips forming the word "Liar," in no uncertain terms. 

Never one to drop the game too soon, Loki licked his lips again. "We'll see," he breathed, and lifted the cover from his dice. The others mirrored the action, expressions darkening as the total  ticked up. _Four twos two aces one four seven sixes one five no threes._

Their glares were matching degrees of murderous as his mask of worried frown dropped in favor of a slightly proud grin. Another show well played. "I believe I am owed, among other things, a drink." 

"Choke on it, you thrice-cursed son of a pox-ridden bastard's whore," growled the creature, but turned to supply the payment beneath the establishment's watchful gaze. 

The insult did not temper Loki's good humor, twirling the key to the handcuffs around a finger before handing it back to the Mechanic. The woman leaned back, thoroughly unsurprised, and he was pleasantly unexpecting of the clear front her initial anger had been. "There are those who would only ever win that dagger from me if I planted it between their eyes," she remarked idly, bared teeth daring him to take it. 

"Keep your razor," Loki bargained, seidr rising to the palms of his hands as he lowered his hood, just in case, "I'm much more interested in what you can tell me about the infinity stones, Gamora."

That, at least, seemed to catch her off guard. The assassin raised a thin brow, one had still idly rolling a die around her palm. "I can't imagine I would be able to tell _you_ anything you did not know already, Asgardian." The odd emphasis sent a faint chill up his spine.

"Hello, Time Lord here," interrupted the Mechanic. "We don't know a whole lot, so really it'd be nice if you let us be the judge of that."

Gamora's lip curled as the Sontaran creature slammed a glass of pale pink liquid hard enough to send up a cloud of foam flecks, storming away with another litany of grumbled curses. She looked to Loki for confirmation. "I'm quite in the dark," he provided, sipping as casually as he could while simultaneously checking for poison. It was a bitter concoction, dark and burning low in his throat. 

Smiling incredulously, she tugged her knife from the table to toss and catch it by the flat of the blade. "I've spent the past two hours becoming intimately familiar with the way you lie, _stranger_ ," she reprimanded softly, and Loki felt himself falter mid-swallow. "You've found the key to what you seek already. It's closer than you think, Time Lord, and vastly more dangerous." 

"Sweetheart, I eat danger for breakfast, and when I shit it out again it's scared of me," drawled the Mechanic, then paused, frowning. "You know when you say something, and it sounds much better in your head--"

"What key?" Loki pushed, trying to catch her meaning. He had something of a sneaking suspicion already, but then he usually did. An unfortunate side effect of being clever. 

Shrugging, Gamora could not quite keep the self-satisfied grin from her face. "The stones are scattered far and wide, _as they should be_ ," she emphasized, an opinion which the trickster could sympathize with wholeheartedly. Abruptly, her gaze flickered away and down, breaking contact long enough to appease any curious eyes that happened to glance their way. Sweeping the five dice from the table robotically, she continued, in a still lower pitch, "But it sounds like you have one particular in mind." The punchline to some private joke struck her then, teeth showing in a flash of amused grin. 

"Know anything about the mind gem?" asked Stark, in nigh obnoxiously flirtatious tones. For Bor's sake, it wasn't as if he could simply seduce an answer out of the assassin! And if anyone could...the prospect caused Loki an unexpected measure of annoyance, and he leaned over to elbow the Mechanic under the guise of collecting his own dice. "Where to find it, maybe?" he grunted, with a touch less intent. 

"Well, the easiest way to find the source is to follow the stream. Something as powerful as that gem leaves a trail." She plucked the glass from Loki's clenched fingers and drained the last of the pink draught in a smooth motion. "I'm afraid that you'll need to win a few more bets with some extremely unsavory people if it's coordinates you're after. Best of luck to you." And the mercenary slipped away, drawing a dark cloak over her lithe frame and pushing back the creaking chair.

"Next time I play, and you wear the handcuffs," Stark murmured irritably into Loki's ear. He shook his head in response.

"You're good, dearest, but I'm better." Weighing the dice in one palm for a moment, Loki slid them into a pocket dimension, out of sight, where they clattered against his armor and a half-dozen spellbooks. "Leave the lying to me. Or better yet, avoid the messy nuisance of letting half the galaxy know what we're looking for before we get any closer." 

"Well, we sure as hell can't get there on _that_ piece of shit advice. Streams and sources, my ass." 

Humming distractedly, Loki turned his focus to the miscellaneous wear marks left on the surface of the table, gaze meandering over it with the air of reading some hidden message there. "Yes, of course," he murmured, "Absolutely ridiculous." Even if pressed it would have been hard for him to say whether he was more disappointed or relieved that his ally had missed the hint.

"Yeah." The Mechanic restated, enthusiasm wavering slightly as he, too, glanced down, and perhaps he wasn't so in the dark after all. "Who knows what she meant?" he sighed, and it sounded more of a leading question than anything.

Not missing a beat, Loki rushed to confirm his suspicions. "We need the spear, don't we?"

"Hell yes, we need the spear," Stark echoed, just behind him. "Figures we'd manage to reduce our only lead to atoms in a highly localized black hole." He flashed Loki a slightly queasy smile close cousin to a wince. The trickster bit down on his tongue to prevent anything untoward or spontaneous escaping his lips. "Still, not a lost cause, hey? JARVIS might be able to replicate or trace the energy signature through the reactor...which, time consuming, but then if we have anything it's time by buckets. Oh, and the telepathic field, that's probably left a mark somewhere inside your head--"

"Yes, about that," began Loki, but the Mechanic didn't seem to hear, lost in a world of hypotheticals and rationals and calculation. Perhaps it was for the best that this card stayed in close to the chest, for use as a future bargaining chip. Certainly Loki was in no hurry to go chasing after anything as dangerous as an infinity stone, and he could be glad for the lengthened reprieve. "I k--"

The cracking of the table in two as an explosive charge detonated far too close for comfort had the rather well-timed effect of interrupting him mid-thought, and the less pleasant result of sending both he and the Mechanic back into the wall with a resounding hollow thud.

Through the spots in his vision, Loki saw the boots of the Sontaran creature advancing. This, at least, was another familiar facet of the games he had not played in so long, though it may have been the part he had least missed. Fights were for companions to brag about and exaggerate beyond all credibility while he mourned the wasted effort he continually put into keeping their sorry hides out of Valhalla's halls that much longer. 

"You cheated me, worm," spat the creature, and Loki scoffed.

"Of a drink and a few trinkets? It was a fair game, for my part." Standing up, he flashed the thing his least perturbed grin, back smarting in a half-dozen places with fast-healing bruises. "Learn to play without relying on a loaded set and a stacked deck, then you may have a chance at just desserts." It was then that he noticed the direction of the barrel, the focus askew, aimed directly for Stark at his back, and not for him.

"You think I don't know a Time Lord when I see one? You want to preach just desserts, boy, you pay me what I'm owed." Thick skin crinkled like grapes in the sun when the creature scowled. "That bastard burned a thousand of us with a missile he sold to us and then to the enemy. That's the Merchant of Death behind you," the Sontaran spat. 

Raising an incredulous eyebrow, Loki spared a glance over his shoulder to the time traveller in question. The Mechanic glared back in stolid defiance, but enough blood had drained from his face for the accusation to ring true in Loki's ears. Ironic, really, that in running from Death he had managed to find solace with a man of Her trade. At least it did not seem that his aim was to please Lady Death, in fact he seemed much less than pleased with the association. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," the Mechanic growled, leg buckling beneath him as he tried to stand. Broken bone, a part of Loki's hindbrain supplied helpfully, which was neither particularly relevant nor the most interesting bit of knowledge to be gleaned from the exchange.

The Sontaran pushed past Loki as he processed the new information, piggish eyes blazing. "I don't see any other Time Lords, do you, murderer?" 

"Oh, that's rich, coming from one of your kind," he spat, defensive in a way that drew the trickster's attention straight to every exploitable weakness laid bare as he lashed like a wounded animal. Half-wishing he'd at least tried to keep the knife handy, Loki followed the advancing creature at an unobserved distance. "How many races have you wiped out, huh?" 

"A Sontaran stands face to face with his victims on the field of battle," it sneered. "Honorably." 

"And if they're not armed? That's slaughter."

"They were armed with the weapons you'd given us, you two-timing coward!" Clenching his teeth as the tension mounted too high to abate with peaceable words, Loki considered his options. 

"I think, perhaps, you have the wrong Time Lord," he ventured pacifically, sliding between the two again as the Mechanic's second attempt to stand failed, sending him to one knee with a crash. 

The Sontaran cracked a viscious smile crafted purely to malice. "Not bloody likely," it said aside to trickster, attention still plainly on the other, "Seeing as there's only one left in the whole universe. He burned his own kind, like he burned mine," the brute declared, almost at a shout. 

The marrow froze in Loki's bones. 

_"You can't kill an entire race!"_

_"Why not?" Rage and ice and madness and despair and desperation and a whole world crushed in his palm._

Norns, he was everything that Loki despised in himself. And they were _allies_. 

"You want to talk about the Time War?" seethed the Mechanic, voice low like he'd been struck openly. "You don't have a single fucking right, your people off slaughtering distracted civilians while the only planet that stood between the universe and destruction was _burning_?" There was so much ice in his voice, eyes cold enough that Loki felt himself shiver, even as the weight of the information gathered like lead in his joints. 

It was too much, and he needed it to _end_. The spear twisted into being, his white-knuckled fingers wrapping around the grip as pure reflex. The all-encapsulating buzz of the telepathic field prodded against his new defenses before doubling back, undaunted, a blue glow lighting his somewhat frenzied face as Loki turned, swung, sent the Sontaran through two tables and a wall with a concussive blast before spinning--

"Woah, hold up." The Mechanic raised his hands in surrender, shrinking from the point at his throat. "On your side, remember?"

A tendon spasmed in his jaw. Loki forced himself to inhale, lowering the weapon. "I had believed so, yes," he said softly, the careful skirting around what he meant clearly understood, if the Time Lord's more than chagrined and not a little defensively blank expression could be trusted. 

"Listen, if you want to bitch about full disclosure, princess, you're sitting on the wrong goddamn high horse." His gaze darted to the blue stone set into the spear with an uneasy flash of misgiving. 

"On the contrary," he said lightly, tracing the tip of the blade along the ground. All patrons and the unfortunate proprietor had managed to vanish since the second or third explosion. One would think that this sort of thing was rare in a place like this, but then one would be hopelessly naive and, unfortunately, wrong. Loki's lip curled. "I was under no misconception that what is between us requires trust." The part of him that unhelpfully contradicted this statement with a pang of off-colored betrayal was promptly squashed.

"A little truth might do good in future, though, I gotta say." The Mechanic made as if to rise a third time, but evidently thought better of it. 

"Eat too much of the truth," Loki quoted absently, setting the spear aside for a closer look at his leg, bent at a sickening angle on the floor. Quite a nasty break toof, he judged, finishing, "and you will die of it." Kneeling beside him in the wreckage, he reached out a tentative hand. "May I?"

The Mechanic narrowed his eyes. "Magic?" 

Dignifying the question with a reply would be admitting defeat. Loki flashed him a false smile still bittered with distrust as his fingers brushed over the wound, then grasped firmly and set the bone with a sharp movement that made the Mechanic gasp out profanities. "An immobile ally is of little use to me," he offered by way of explanation, a soft reminder that they had common goals if not trust. 

The Mechanic made no reply, lost in searching Loki's expression with a near-frantic intensity as magic began to knit the bone together. Loki gave him nothing, with a sort of vicious satsifaction. And perhaps he was a touch stiff as he rose to his feet, palms brushing against his thighs as if to wipe of all traces of the other. 

If he noticed he had been healed, Stark made no sign of it. "Allies, huh?" he echoed, and smiled. It didn't nearly reach his eyes, of course. "I thought for a second there that maybe--"

"Allies," said Loki, coldly, "not friends." And certainly not...whatever it was they had almost been, before. 

A flash of disappointment registered, however briefly, in Stark's face before he, too, rose to his feet. "I can do that," he said, and his gaze dropped expectantly to the spear in Loki's other hand. "Come on, hitchhiker, we've got a gem to find." 

*

If the ship's incorporeal captain had had a mouth, the lips would have been pursed thin and stern, like a scolding matron or a disappointed tutor. "I had wondered where that spear had gone," he said, entirely disapproving. Loki could think of no better response than to outright sneer at the suspicion cast his way. The lights flickered in warning, and Loki, who remembered what JARVIS could do to an unprepared seidrmaster, kept his guard up.

After nearly a week of the same cautious tiptoeing, he found himself growing restless. There really was a limit to the number of wards his temporary chambers could hold undetected, as diverting as it was to spent long hours elbows-deep in magic theory, bending the laws set by nature in any way he could think of. Runes were carved on every surface, the walls thrumming with seidr, the very air embracing Loki as a familiar old friend for the long stretches he spent in the room, at intervals conducting his ongoing studies into the spear and its origins and fortifying his new mental defenses almost obsessively. A near mirror of his faraway chambers in Asgard, the rooms allotted him on the Mechanic's craft, temporary though they were meant to be. Loki felt himself becoming somewhat attached, to tell the truth, which did nothing but to increase the ennui building in his bones. 

And there was no question of loitering around the bridge, watching the Mechanic mutter to himself and prod at the spear with various nonsense, scrabbling frankly fascinating equations which started as the indecipherable circles of his mother tongue before the ship's translators kicked in. The less time spent there, the better, or Loki would find himself asking too many questions, and worse yet recieving more answers.

Of course the prospect of putting their heads together and compiling their seperate studies, picking one another's brains had proven rather tempting. But Loki had always worked better alone. And besides, what would follow once they did manage to chase their little stream back to its source hardly bore imagining. Loki almost, almost preferred the boredom to whatever possibility awaited them.

Still, in the end, it made little difference. Loki reached out for the hundredth time in as many hours, and the spear replied, for the first time, with a single high, clear note. Green eyes flew open, a rush of something akin to glee pumping through his veins, a cry of victory on his lips--

"Mister Stark requests your presence on the bridge, Sir," JARVIS' prim tones cut through the haze of power clouding his mind. Annoyed, he set it aside. 

"I found the right frequency, you'll be overjoyed to hear," the Time Lord explained, without preamble. 

"As have I," Loki interrupted, with a glance toward the spear, hovering over the central console and emitting the same faint note, just out of most mortals' hearing ranges but well within his. 

"Go us," Stark said, with a humorless grin. "Race ya to the patent office. Anyway, we're en route as we speak. J?"

"ETA two minutes, Sir. Apologies, there are some slight distortions to steer through." 

Ah, damn. He could feel the gem getting closer, the tiny anchor in the back of his mind was burning with energy as they drew near. The ground was rushing up to meet them, so fast that it seemed naught but a blur. 

There was a Lady, in a cloak of night, with eyes blank as a sky after a storm, and She reached out to him with icy hands--

"Woah, Nelly!" The ship jostled abrubtly, shaking Loki out of his reverie. They were close now, so close he could taste it. The Mechanic yanked unceremoniously on a lever as the screen flickered to life. "Hell of a bumpy ride, J." 

"Apologies, Sir, but there seems to be some sort of barrier surrounding the source of the signal." 

"You're saying we hit a wall?"

"Very nearly, Sir," JARVIS corrected, with an accompanying whirr as the monitor flickered above them, calculating. "I'm experiencing some difficulty in landing within the planet's atmosphere--" 

"Woah, hold up, a planet? An impenetrable planet?"  There was a manic edge to Stark's smile. Loki disliked it.

Uncurling his fingers from the railing stiffly, he set his jaw in false disappointment. "Perhaps it's a sign," he said sadly. "A pity that we could go no further."

Nose wrinkling in deep suspicion, the Mechanic turned to him. "Hang on, this isn't you, is it?" 

Loki hummed thoughtfully, prodding at the barrier with a tentative trickle of seidr, and turning a pleasantly surprised eye on his ally. "Astute of you as it is to make the guess," he acknowledged, "I'm afraid not. Next time, perhaps."

"Look, hitchhiker, you can sit this one out if you really want to." he said, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. The trickster opened his mouth to object, eyes flickering to the spear and back. The Mechanic cleared his throat with his usual air of false nonchalance. "I get it. It's stupid, it's bound to be dangerous, I'm a reckless guy. You're not some kind of adrenaline junkie," he waved one hand, shrugging, and patted the console behind him with the other. "I get it. I really do." 

Loki growled in defeat. "Stark-"

"You don't trust me," he shrugged again, eyes tight. "I don't even trust me. So..."

"Stark, for the love of the Nine, will you shut up?" barked Loki, pushing off of the railing and backing the Time Lord against the console with a halfhearted menacing glare. He stared the silently smug Mechanic down, tendon pulsing in his jaw, then stepped away, a sigh rattling his chest. Turning away to examine JARVIS' readings closer, he asked, "What kind of barrier?" 

A knowing smile had doubtless crept over the Mechanic's face, curse him. Clapping Loki on the shoulder and pulling him into an uncomfortable and entirely too sentimental side-embrace. "I knew it. You love danger, you _so_ love it. Oh, brilliant." 

"The planet is shielded from above by a stronger than average variety of force field," the ship's intelligence supplied, "Specifically designed to keep all spacecraft out." 

With a pout clearly visible even from the side, the Mechanic said, "What, even little old us?"

"Permeability is clearly not based on size, Mechanic," Loki pointed out, "Or a craft this small would have been able to penetrate the shield." 

Affronted, he defended, "JARVIS is big where it counts," in a huff, patting the hovering screen tenderly. "Isn't that right, J?" 

"It does appear, Sir, that attempting to transport nothing more than yourself and Mr. Loki would be unsuccessful." 

Grumbling something that sounded like 'bullshit', the Mechanic crossed his arms. "Well, then, let's crack it open." 

"Sir?" JARVIS asked, as Loki gaped, "What?" 

"We can't sneak in," he reasoned, stomping a foot as if to indicate the very physical presence of the obstacle beneath them, "So we break in. Plus, explosions are more fun, and subtlety is so overrated, don't you think?"

"...That is inadeviseable at best, Sir." For once Loki found himself fully in agreement with the ship's intelligence. 

"Do try to at least consider what spews from that cavernous mouth of yours," he said acidly, to which the Mechanic merely stifled a grin. "For one, we would broadcast the location of the gem to any and all who wander this way, and what's more, I can think of no way to effectively split a force field when the general purpose of one is to remain impervious to outside force." 

For a moment, he said nothing, but Loki could see the numbers flashing somewhere behind his eyes, a fascinating expression of pure calculation contorting his face. "So we don't use outside force," he suggested, a sly smile stretching his lips. 

Unsure whether he'd missed something or--which seemed more probable--his companion had finally run mad. "I don't know whether you noticed, dear, but we can't actually _get inside_." There was an idea dancing at the edge of his thoughts, just close enough to formed that he did not hestitate to trail behind as the Mechanic turned, raced to the central console with a glint in his eye.

"Who says we need to?" 

Loki made as if to retort, but faltered at his cocksure tone. He doubted the Mechanic, Merchant of Death and last Time Lord, in many things, but not in his intelligence. There was something to this boast, he decided, and narrowed his eyes questioningly as the Mechanic as he stared down at the spear. 

_It had drawn them here_ , he realized, and then wondered why it was important. There was something missing, some small vital piece of understanding. It was not an altogether familiar feeling, or a pleasant one. "How?" he questioned, intent on his ally. 

While the Mechanic seemed gleeful at his own knowledge, he was also bursting to share it, a fault of his that he clearly attempted to compensate for by use of the ship as a trustworthy sounding board. "The spear is pulled back towards the infinity stone, but the pull goes both ways, like two magnets. We have the negative end, and the positive end--"

"Is below the force field," Loki finished for him, grinning like a madman--and perhaps he was. "Can we strengthen the pull?"

In response, the Mechanic lifted his gauntleted hand to tap at the glow in the center of his chest. "Sonic should be able to manipulate the field enough to increase magnetization," he said, and Loki was thrown again by the oddness of it: a sonic device planted in the sternum, displacing bone and tissue and...doing what, exactly? As if reading his shifted gaze, the Mechanic turned slightly away, and Loki let his eyes wander back to the hovering screen some meters away. 

"Where exactly are we?" 

"I'm afraid I couldn't say," JARVIS replied, with a tone of genuine regret. Loki mistrusted a voice which he could not put a face to, but had no real cause to doubt the claim. "I'm currently repairing circuits damaged in the initial collision with the force field." 

Turning back to the Mechanic with sudden foreboding, Loki said, "Perhaps we should wait." 

"Too late. Suit up," the Mechanic said, as the gauntlet buzzed at a flat, probing frequency rather like a screwdriver trying to chip at a mountain. He frowned, and the pitch sharpened abruptly. Immediately, the spear began to shriek, so like an unearthed mandrake that Loki flinched, hands flying to sensitive ears in pain. 

There was a colossal shudder, and a groan, and a ringing that receded in Loki's ears with an echo that sounded suspiciously like _Silvertongue_ , before the ship creaked and began to tear apart around them. 

Loki lunged for the spear without thinking, meeting the Mechanic's hand around its shaft as curses flew from his lips. A rush of blinding blue light washed over them in a wave and fell _up_ , meeting the tattered remains of the force field and swirling into space in a chaotic mass of non-Euclidian geometry. 

And quite suddenly, the ship had vanished entirely, and the Mechanic and Loki were alone, with nothing but the spear, the silence, and the taste of burnt almonds on the backs of their tongues. "We're here," Loki managed, with shuddering laugh, then paused. "I don't suppose you know where we are?" 

A swift glance to the side showed the Mechanic's gaze fixed intently on the sky above their heads: bleak, and empty of everything living. Tall things that could pass either for statues or skyscrapers jutted into the orange sky, thick with strange gases that Loki was grateful not to be breathing, cocooned by a soft layer of protective siedr. Stark's dark eyes were almost black with something like rage, and Loki was reminded of Jotunheim's biting wind on the back of his neck. "Skaro," growled the Mechanic, "We're on Skaro."

*

"Day fifty-seven, oh-eight-hundred-thirty," Corporal Falsworth grumbled into the log, one hand swiping across his heavy eyes and re-adjusting his ever-present beret. "If you've guessed no bloody change, then props to you." He liked to spice up the logs a little, since it'd been fifty-six days of much the same thing and there were only so many ways to say 'Nothing happened'. The captain always hated to hear his reports for precisely that reason, but then Falsworth damn well hadn't been asked to join the team on account of his manners. Bollocks were all that counted out here, and Monty had more bollocks than most. "Lights are all red, force field present and accounted for. We're not getting in, nothing else is getting out; secure as a bug under a bowl, and I'd like to know if you could fry an egg on the surface, but I've been told that Dernier and Jones have tried--"

One of the lights flickered, noticeable enough that Falsworth paused for a closer look. 

"Hold that thought," he muttered, leaning in to prod the light with a finger. "Damn thing."

The explosion took him rather by surprise, which was nearly a first for him, but admittedly a lot more fun than most explosions he had the opportunity to cause himself. Shaking himself as he stood, he barked out a laugh. Every light was shining a sickly bright blue.

"Oh-eight-hundred-thirty-two," he tried again, but the log was fizzing and letting of a frankly disheartening barrage of smoke. Falsworth scowled, then paled as he got a good look beyond the decimated equipment and out the bay window. "Well, fuck me." The captain was going to love this.

*

Once the shaking in his hands had subsided and his breathing had steadied, Loki turned again to the Mechanic, who stared blankly ahead, lost in some all-ecompassing emotion. "We should go."

"Go where?" he said dimly, in a tone rife with ire that Loki was unsure he deserved. "Where the hell is there to _go?_ "

Grunting and climbing to his feet, spear in hand, Loki replied, "We will not be alone for long. If someone else were to come by and steal the gem from under our noses..."

"Yeah, maybe we should let them."

Loki shot him a look dripping with scathing derision at that, and he finally deigned to make eye contact, recovering from his sullen slump with disconcerting speed. "Right, you're right, okay. Shelter." He brushed his hands over his knees quickly, gaze dropping to the ground in a fairly effective bid to disguise whatever expression still roiled in his eyes. 

"Gem first," Loki corrected. 

It was apparently his turn to recieve a scathing look at that. "Do you really think we're gonna get a moment's rest with an infinity stone in our hands, hitchhiker? Plus, we still have the Silvertongue, which gives us a pretty fair advantage," he gestured at the spear in Loki's hand, and the trickster nodded brusquely, barely managing to suppress a flinch at the reminder. It was worrying to know how easily he could slip where this particular misdirection was concerned, and he was in no hurry to give up his secret until he understood more fully what he was up against. Whether the spear or he himself was a weapon fated to topple galaxies in the name of unknown shadowy beings who solicited Death, it made no difference. Loki had every intention of keeping those shadowy beings in deep disappointment. 

"Shelter where?" he asked simply, flexing his fingers around the shaft to loosen their white-knuckled grip. "Some cave in the mountains?" The whole place looked dreadfully inhospitable and quite barren. Acidic water dripped slowly into hissing lakes from the towering structures above their heads, and the sky burned rusty orange, like Muspelheim in high midsummer. Loki never could abide Muspelheim. 

He nearly missed the shiver which the Mechanic masked with a laugh. "We're not far from the old city, I think. Few days walk--"

"So, a cave then." There was no mistaking the flinch this time. For a moment, the Mechanic seemed ready to interject with a firm refusal, then his jaw steeled and he swallowed. Loki raised a brow infinitesimally. "Are the mountains inhabited? Perhaps by some variety of wild beast?"

"Something like that," he equivocated, which was quite a poor deflection. "Used to be, anyway. Whole planet should be abandoned now."

"Ah, but they never truly are," Loki said with the hint of a smile. 

The Mechanic shook his head. "Skaro's been through two of the universe's biggest wars. Half the population gone by the end of the Thousand Years War, and, well..." He gazed up at the monolith, which loomed larger now that they walked under it. "The other one lasted so long that they just called it the Great Time War. Everyone lost." A bitterness had crept into his voice that sent a shiver down Loki's spine, and he wondered if that was when he'd done it. Killed them all, as the Sontaran thing had claimed. 

Being as there was no standard social protocol for politely discussing past attempts at genocide, though, he skirted neatly around the thought, making no reply. When Ratatoskr ran to the eagle, he always returned to the serpent, and it was all one in the end. The planet was empty but for themselves and any else who had broken through the now disintegrated barrier. 

"Is..." he began, but faltered. "That is, if you know....the ship?" All at once, the possibility that they really were completely stranded in this hellhole loomed. How long, Loki wondered, how long before Mistress Death caught up to him now? 

The Mechanic shook his head again, pasting on a false grin. "I've always wanted to hijack a Skrull cruiser, though. Missed my calling to space piracy, and here I've been given a second chance. It's a big universe, matey, we're not settling down just yet." He made a grand and messy gesture with what Loki assumed was his sword hand which proved that he would be absolutely abysmal at sword combat. 

"You've far too many limbs to be a pirate of any kind, Stark," he said a touch too playfully, because the Mechanic's smile grew almost genuine. 

"Promise you'll come pillage with me, hitchhiker? Be my first mate? You and me, sailing the stars, hey?" Something twinged painfully in Loki's chest, and he shied away from the Time Lord's flirtatious grin, half wincing. 

"Perhaps," he replied, a touch less stiffly than he meant to, throwing in a soft smile that took him fully by surprise, then frowning. "Though I don't see why you should be allowed the position of captain. The power would likely go to your head." 

Shrugging, the Mechanic elbowed his side, leaning in secretively. "You know what? Fuck convention, we're pirates." Loki smothered a burst of laughter, and he raised a suggestive eyebrow. "Let's be co-captains. You'd look hot in an eyepatch." 

At that, Loki full-out shuddered. "Let's agree to disagree." Still, there was some degree of amusement to be derived in imagining the Allfather with a parrot on one shoulder to replace Muninn and his cryptic crowing. But Loki was not his father, and never would be, and that was the end of it. 

"You're right, only Fury can pull those things off, and it's still a highly questionable accessory if you ask me." 

Dropping the thread of the frankly ridiculous conversation, Loki slowed his pace. "You don't happen to know when we are, do you?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Maybe. Roughly." The Mechanic licked the pad of one finger and held the digit aloft, as if feeling for something in the air. "This planet's seven billion years old exactly, so it's twenty-first century on Earth." 

"Really," said Loki incredulously, so sarcastic that it was only half a question. 

"Actually, 2013," he revised, with a sly smile, "We only moved through space to get here, so..."

"Could you do it?" he asked, the question springing unbidden from his lips. "Could you stand wandering in a straight line, even if you never stayed still a moment? No more time travel?"

A slight hitch in Stark's step gave the answer for him. "Don't have much of a choice, do I?" 

"There's always a choice," Loki refuted, and he nearly tripped over his feet, reaching out to steady himself against Loki's arm. The trickster stilled, reaching out a hand to help him catch his balance, and was taken slightly aback to see the haunted quality in his wide eyes, which were cast to the barren ground before them. 

"Not always," he said, in a voice so low and hoarse that Loki could barely decipher the words through the well of emotion. And that...sounded like giving up, which--

Fingers clenched tight to the sleeve of the Mechanic's jacket, he spun around to grip both shoulders, leaning in close enough to press their foreheads together. Instinct, almost, something that he could not calculate and did not care to suppress. "You built JARVIS once, I have no doubt that you could do so again, Stark. We will find the mind gem, and we will survive, and you will travel on until time itself is no more and live to see a thousand more impossible things done by _your own hand_ , but you have to _choose_." The Mechanic stared, expression incalculable. "I've learned that from you, actually," Loki choked out. "I knew it all my life, but I never saw it until you, you in your mad, brilliant spaceship and _you have two hearts_ and you speak of universes beyond imagination and we've _saved the world_ ," he said with a shudder. " _Twice_." And he wanted to go on, to tell him that he himself made a game of the rules of the universe and some called him an ageless god and he carried power enough in his veins to turn the nine realms to bitter ash and still he was fascinated by a man who drifted alone through the universe in a flying car that was bigger on the inside. 

"Yeah," said the Mechanic, breathless with the same terrifying sentiment Loki saw echoing in his face. "It's a great gig, isn't it?"

"I love it," he said, with an absolutely mad grin. "And I'm not going to stop just because some foolish ass lost us our ship." When the hell he'd started to think of JARVIS as _their_ ship Loki couldn't have said, but it was only one in a list of horrifying revelations he was desperately not having at the moment, so he let it be. 

"Hey, if you hadn't insisted on tagging along, you'd still have a ship."

"Or we'd both be dead," Loki hypothesized, and wondered all at once whether he really could die. 

"No, I'm like a cat, hitchhiker, I've got nine lives. Or something. I've lost count, to be honest, and whole we're talking honestly I'd really like to kiss you right now," he said in a rush, following after Loki as he pulled out of the awkwardly intimate embrace. 

It was difficult for Loki to tell whether he had stopped breathing completely in the wake of this proclamation, caught up in two equally strong surges of 'yes' and 'no', a rather cliché battle of head and heart. He supposed that he must simply have stared like a deer in headlights until the Mechanic closed the distance and the choice was made for him. 

He still had one hand against Stark's chest, ready to push away even as he sunk into the kiss gratefully, eyes falling half-shut. Loki had heard that it was unhealthy to spend so much effort at thinking while engaged in such intimate activities, but he also knew that the most dangerous thing for him to do was to stop resisting and damn the consequences. Norns, they were in the middle of a deserted alien desert, stranded indefinitely, and--

\--and that was no desert. Pulling away with a gentleness that did not stop the Mechanic's soft noise of loss from escaping, he narrowed his eyes, trying to calm his still-racing heart. "I think," he said softly, "That we may have solved the problem of shelter." 

Stark was a bit slow to turn and follow his gaze, still blinking owlishly up at Loki in a distracted way. Rolling his eyes good-naturedly, the trickster gestured at the spot over his left shoulder, relishing the low whistle that escaped the Mechanic when he saw it too. "Kaled Dome," he muttered by way of explanation, then took a step closer, squinting. "Wait, that's impossible. There aren't any left."

Loki tilted his head up warily, smelling something like sulphur and something like smoke in the air. "You said that the planet was uninhabited."

"Yeah, well, last I checked it wasn't surrounded by a borderline impenetrable force field, either." Taking Loki's hand in that tactile and overfamiliar way of his, the Mechanic tugged them both in the direction of this mysterious dome, which rose into the distance like a mirage, the light of two suns glinting off the bright metal of the structure. "Let's get closer." 

"It could be a trap," warned the trickster, and he nodded. 

"Yeah, probably, but would you rather risk them?" The smoke smell registered again, and Loki turned to see the faint outline of a ship growing larger above them. Their being unarmed entirely might have been preferable to carrying the spear which would lead straight to one of the six deadliest weapons in the universe, and dread filled Loki at the thought of unanticipated company. The Mechanic tugged their joined hands again, insistent, and wordlessly Loki complied, the two setting off at a frantic run towards the dome. No shadows to speak of, they were limited to what speed their feet could provide. It was a bit thrilling, to tell the truth, which was something Loki usually tried to avoid at all costs. 

"The door!" he called out, as the side of the metal dome approached. "Can we break it down?"

"Don't need to," the Mechanic gasped, raising the gauntlet and pulling them against the side to watch the ship--disconcertingly large and well-armed--make a smooth landing almost atop their previous position in the vast flatland. "Sonic!" 

"Fortunate for us it's not wood," Loki said with a breathless laugh, recalling his earlier mention of the glaring engineering oversight. The Mechanic shot him a pouting look, scanning over what did appear to be a door of sorts, but so covered in gears and screens that it waxed nigh unrecognizeable until it slid open. 

"Inside!"

"Yes, I know," he snapped, and turned, and let his jaw fall slack. 

It was massive, nearly enough to give cause to suspect that the dome was larger on the inside, so packed with treasures that it called to mind the mystical caves of Midgardian lore. Yet nothing so simple as gold or diamonds shone before them in the half-light. Surrounding the pair was a weapons vault to put Asgard's to shame.

"It's like a museum," breathed the Mechanic, eyes wide and blank with shock, and indeed it was. Pedestals and gilded cages of every material imaginable lined the chamber, swords stained with the blood of gods hung from every wall. Each display, Loki noted, daring to venture further in, glowed with a faint light, the contents labeled with a careful, curling hand. The chamber they were in branched off with no less than fifteen other doors--these, unfortunately, coded by something beyond simple words, and therefore untranslatable. "Holy shit, that's--"

"Valhalla above," Loki swore softly.

Stark paused before a glass case containing what appeared to be a mummified hand, studded with rings. He stared, brows knitted in something like triumphant horror, then doubled over laughing. "A museum full of the most dangerous stuff in the universe," he said with a cackle. "Come on, it's, like, the perfect place to find an infitity stone!"

"It's a good place to get killed," amended Loki sarcastically. Uru, there were weapons of uru, an axe which he knew to belong to the lover of an old friend, polished cleaner then it had been since it was forged. And of course he could see artifacts of his own preferred sort as well--were those norn stones glinting in the far corner?

He jumped when the Mechanic clapped a hand to his shoulder, still grinning like the madman he was. "Pessimism doesn't suit you, Loki. What happened to 'anything is possible'?"

Possible brought Loki to probable, which clicked smoothly through a series of thoughts, tumbled down a spiral of paranoia, ran calculations, checked them twice, and sounded a shrill alarm in the back of his head. "Someone collected all of this." 

Stark whistled, then jumped in excitement, scanning the very air over their heads. "That's it! The whole planet is storage!" He blinked, then repeated, "A whole planet?" as though he were just now realizing the incredible scale of the pile of shit they had gotten themselves into. He knew nothing yet, Loki cursed, pulse jumping in his neck. "Well, it does explain the force field--"

"Stark," he snapped, then tried and failed to steady his breathing. "Someone is collecting the most dangerous weapons in the universe, and _we brought them the spear_ ," he hissed. The gravity of the situation was conveyed perfectly, to judge by the undiluted fear that flashed in the Mechanic's eyes. _He didn't have half a right to panic, he wasn't a living weapon, not like Loki was._

The dome wasn't a trap. The planet was. Hel, perhaps even their search was always destined to bring them here. He should have just left the thrice-cursed thing in Banner's basement.

"Okay," said Stark, with a shuddering sigh, taking Loki's hand to pull him closer. "Okay. Shit." 

"At the very least, we're not unarmed," Loki tried, and did not feel an overabundance of comfort. 

The Mechanic nodded. "We should...move, I don't know. Somewhere. Hide." If it were even possible. "And hey, me and giving people weapons on Skaro?" he joked somberly, "Not the best track record." 

"That's almost promising," Loki said encouragingly, not very certain what he meant by it. He pulled the spear closer, hand going almost numb from his bloodless grip. 

Sharing a smile with Loki which realized the likelihood of mutual demise in their immediate future, the Time Lord swallowed and kicked open the nearest inner door. "Touch nothing but the lamp," he said, in mock ominous tones that still sent a faint shiver through the trickster. 

Two things happened in crossing the threshold of the door--a concentrated burst of noise and Stark's hand slipping from his grip--and both were so sudden that Loki was left dazed and stumbling on the other side, the sound of a gunshot ringing in his ears. Immeditately shifting to the defense, he lowered his center of gravity and raised the spear, ready to swing it hard enough to slice bone neatly in two. "Stark," he gasped, without quite meaning to, and heard no reply. The lights of the displays burned a gentle red, the artifacts resting in each place the only distinguishable difference from the room they had just left. Excepting, of course, the absence of the Mechanic. Loki moved behind a glass column preserving the body of some creature that was half metal and half stone.

"Damn you, Stark," he whispered angrily, wary of being overheard by whatever malevolent force had caused his companion to vanish without a trace but the smell of burnt almond. "If you've died, I'll revive you and kill you again myself."

From the other chamber, he heard voices, too many voices, and unfamiliar ones. Slipping from behind his improvised cover, Loki debated reaching out to grab the twisted dagger resting on a nearby pillow, but feared setting off an alarm. And he still had the spear, of course, which was the only halfway good thing to be said about the situation. 

He chose a door at random, and then another from that room, and wondered as he slipped through shadows and ducked through doors if the labyrinth ever ended. There had to be a center, somewhere, some kind of control room. Somewhere, the mind gem rested innocuously, silently awaiting his arrival, and he took pains to avoid it, to go the opposite way that the spear urged him each time. 

It seemed, he realized, pausing before the tenth door at the sound of footsteps, that the other crew had split to cover more ground. A poor idea, one which would only make it that much easier for Loki to slit all of their throats and bleed them dry before they knew that they had met the edge of his blade. And yet, he decided, backing away from the door and lowering the spear, there was no need for all of that just yet. 

So Loki chose the door immediately to the right, and was plunged into pitch blackness. Cursing internally and fumbling for the knob, he found a hopeless case as the sound of footsteps carried into the chamber behind him. There was nothing for it but to press on, steeling his jaw and trying not to imagine that he felt the darkness crawling over his skin with a thousand tiny limbs. 

The stone in the spear lit the path before him dimly, casting its light over what seemed to be a room barren of weapons and entrances both, like something from a fae nightmare. And worse yet, he discovered, turning, it was furnished with mirrors. 

At least, so the trickster assumed until the second blue light moved closer, and did not follow when he raised the spear warningly. Loki was not alone, there was a creature staring at him with a single glowing eye, and now that he thought about it the circle of light did sit nearly at chest level, didn't it? 

Loki could have cried with relief, lowering his weapon and relaxing his tensed spine. "Stark," he breathed. "Where the hell have you been?" 

There was no reply. Perhaps he was unconscious. "Mechanic?" 

Quite suddenly, another light entered his field of vision, and another, and he realized that he may have miscalculated slightly. 

His mirror light emitted the first reply, a high, grinding shriek of a word that sent his blood running cold. "Ex-ter-min-ate!" 


	2. AUTHORS NOTE, January 2016

A/N Jan 2016: Guys. I hate to admit it, but I don't think I'll pick this series up again, due to life and the sheer amount of time it's been since I've worked on it. If anyone would be interested in seeing my notes and plan for the rest of the series, here's the link to a Google doc with the tentative plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PYDQFs1UoVP9aHerLYe6yeoncaXUaGa0ojcylyzryWI/edit?usp=sharing. Also let me know if you want to take up the baton, loyal readers. Thanks for all the support!

**Author's Note:**

> Good news: I'm doing the frostiron bang
> 
> Bad news: I'm doing the frostiron bang. Whoops, busy times ahead.
> 
> Got questions? Got suggestions? Got a crush? Talk to me here in comments or follow me at dudepool.tumblr.com


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